Isn't there some saying about finding beauty in the imperfections?  I could have sworn I had heard something to that effect, if not, there should be.  This past Saturday found me at a local pottery painting store.  You know the ones where you go in, pick a piece of pottery you like and paint it.  They glaze it and fire it for you, and in a few days, voila, you have your own creation. 

I have wanted to do this for a long time.  I am not a very creative person, especially when it comes to arts and crafts.  I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to spread my creative wings.  After you pick your piece you get a ten minute tutorial about how to paint and what techniques are available via a color wheel of how each type of form and paint will look,  and so on.  It is laid out very well and explained so that a five year old could get it. The last thing she said to us was, " if you are a perfectionist, you are in trouble".  Was she talking to me?  I think so.

It isn't that I am a perfectionist about everything, but some things I want to be really good at.  I discovered painting pottery is not one of them.  But I thought about how this fun activity of painting pottery is related to life.  I took my time to select the colors I wanted to use, colors that represented how I was feeling at the time, as well as, what would go with my decor.  I picked several stencils, sponges, and brushes.  I carefully laid everything on the table where I was working.  It was a meticulous process for me, just as I treat life.  Trying to control how this was going to go. 

I stared at my bowl and tried to decide what to do first, sort of like trying to decide what path to take next on a journey.  I didn't want to choose the wrong color, path if you will.  And then I began painting my background color.  I couldn't tell how it would look, but I quickly realized the uneven brush strokes are like that of my life, uneven and uncertain.  So in trying to make it even, I did a second coat, again trying to make it uniform and perfect.  I proceeded to paint a darker color around the top edge of the bowl, my hand unsteady the whole time.  I saw this as yet another metaphor for how unsteady I am about things in my own life. 

I looked across the table at my friend painting away.  She was getting mildly, very mildly, annoyed that she had made some mistakes of her own.  I assured her it was the imperfections that made it beautiful.  What a fraud, I was trying to make mine perfect, yet I really believed in the words that had just come out of my mouth seconds before.  And that is when I found the perfect stencil, it said "gratitude".  I had gone over several stencils before and saw many words that spoke to me, but none like this.  I knew this was the word to go in the bottom of my bowl. 

The sweet girl that worked at the shop had me stencil it onto paper and copy it into the bowl, it looked okay.  I then had to paint over it, not so good, and definitely not perfect.   I proceeded to paint another coat on the top edge of my bowl, and then BOOM, I went way out of my self imposed lines.  Talk about a flaw, I couldn't believe it.  I had tried so hard to make it even, perfect in fact.  Now my bowl of gratitude was completely imperfect. So to add insult to injury, I decided to paint the word at the bottom of the bowl darker, not a perfect lettered word anymore.

But I learned a lot that Saturday morning.  Life isn't perfect, we have flaws.  It is the flaws that make us unique.   Just like the color wheel with so much variety, so is life.  My bowl is far from being prize worthy, but to me it is priceless.  I had a wonderful time trying to explore my creative side.  Just like anything in life, we have to try until we get it right.   There are signs along the way to guide us.  I believe that Saturday my sign was right there in the bottom of my imperfectly painted bowl.  It was gratitude.  And I was grateful.  Grateful for a life that is full of surprises. Grateful for the flaws that make me who I am, and grateful for the rudimentary lines in my bowl.  Just like my life they are a learning tool to keep trying and keep learning.  It turned out to be a great time, full of perfections and imperfections.  Great company and lots of laughs, and most of all it was a day filled to the rim with gratitude.